Posted by Marcus Benedetti, President and CEO, Clover Stornetta Farms

Editors note: Clover Stornetta Farms is a family-owned and operated dairy processor that distributes a wide range of dairy products consumed by millions of families throughout the western United States under the Clover Stornetta and Clover Organic Farms brands.

Since the 1970’s, we’ve worked hard to do right by our customers and the environment, reducing our water consumption by 10 million gallons a year, converting our sales fleet to Hybrid vehicles, and always sourcing our milk from local farmers committed to the sustainability of their land, welfare of their cows and producing the highest quality milk pool in the country. These are the things we care about. So, when our IT infrastructure began to limit our ability to work together as we grew, we knew we had to find a new solution that allowed us to focus on making great dairy products, not running a complex IT system.

Google Apps provides us with a platform that can help the Clover business grow without a heavy investment from our IT team. The move to Google Apps went very smoothly and our IT team now spends 25% less time supporting email than they did with our old infrastructure.

We’ve always been very team-oriented, and Google Apps has made it easier for us to work even more closely and collaboratively. Since Google Apps is delivered via the cloud, our employees love that they can access their email, calendar and files from any computer or mobile device. Instead of waiting until we can meet face-to-face, we save time by working together in Google Docs and video chatting in Gmail. Google Apps has been a huge time saver.

The dairy industry is very traditional, but that doesn’t mean our IT has to be. We love that Google is constantly innovating and we can benefit from the new features and products available to us. With Google Apps, we know that we can continue to work together and communicate as if we’re a small company, even as we grow.